first take the sunlight inside your body and soul
then dip down into the darkness of the waters
add the salt of the earth, take a deep breath: you’re here
from the middle of the pond I watch the moon wane
each day thinner and thinner, higher and higher
she’s fading into light, revealing her dark face
buzzards high above fly a silent circle song
the cicada’s drone draws out the end of summer
my heart swings wide, wild, child on a carnival ride
I am old as Olga, adrift in my last days
I am a child, standing on a rock by a lake
I am neither, only the whirl of wind, light, wave
over and over I witness the round from shoot
to bud to flower to seed or seed within fruit
always a fall, the dying back down to the root
I look for metaphors, I seek to know my phase
fresh, fading, bearing fruit or rot, Elizabeth,
life will rise again, whether it is yours—or not.
I have been experimenting with the ghazal form since meeting poet JK McDowell and reading his collection Night Mystery Light. My primitive understanding is that the form has lines of 12 syllables, stanzas of three lines which must stand alone as a poem, and six stanzas total. There may be other rules of which I am not aware.